


Holy Palmer's Kiss

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: M/M, Not Really Character Death, Past Lives, Real Kinky Stuff Like Hand-Holding, Reincarnation, or at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 07:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17463401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Some things never change.They've been countless men and women and children and animals, in countless places and countless walks of life, but Jack always, always takes care of him. And Jack's always given him the one thing he really needed from him.





	Holy Palmer's Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/gifts).



> So, initially, in writing you another fic, based on various thoughts kicked around the discord, like... This was to say thank you for the subscription, back when I thought 'oh, well the fandom stockings will go up soon and I'll put in a nice thank you', and then there was an extension. And then, being me, I got incredibly anxious over the question of whether it was too late, which I'm aware is ridiculous, but there you have it...
> 
> Anyway, thank you, and I hope to have written something(s) enjoyable!

Jack holds a hand out to Gil, and Gil meets him palm to palm immediately, without looking up from his book. 

 

“What are you doing?” Jack asks him, voice soft and warm like a blanket. Like something Gil could wrap himself up in and he’d just be safe and cozy. 

 

It feels like that sometimes. Like things between them that shouldn’t be physical are. Like Jack’s soul is a tangible thing that Gil can touch and hold, like if he tugged on the thing that connects them, their bodies would move. 

 

“Research.” He turns the book a little, but Jack’s not looking. Jack’s looking at Gil, he knows before he turns and their eyes meet. 

 

That, too, is something he can feel. The weight of Jack’s gaze on him is familiar, comforting. And his eyes… Gil forgets his research a moment once he sees those. He’s lost in them, how warm and dark and sheltering. Jack’s eyes are like a place he can go to where the rest of the world just stops, where he doesn’t have to be scared anymore. Not of anything.

 

“What are you researching?” 

 

“Working on my timeline. Trying to piece together where and when, some of the little ones.”

 

“The little ones?” Jack laughs, but he doesn’t really ask for clarification, he doesn’t need it. The little ones, the past lives Gil’s only had glimpses of, the ones he hasn’t reconstructed as fully. 

 

He’s got a timeline and a map both, in their office, a big world map with color-coded pins. Red pins for lives where they were as they are now, two men, desperately in love. Blue pins for lives where they were a man and a woman. Green if they were both women. Yellow if they weren’t lovers-- not many of those, but a couple. Master and pet here, siblings there. If they came from different places, the pin goes in the place they lived together.

 

There’s one black pin in the map, the only life he’s ever had a glimpse of where he never met Jack, or knew where he might have been in the world. The only one he won’t talk about. He tries not to think about it. The rest, he’ll tell Jack about at the slightest show of interest. 

 

Jack’s pulse beats in time with his own, he can feel it where there hands meet. 

 

_ And Jack, holding his hand, one of their earliest lives. Gil a ptolemaic Egyptian, Jack… something else. Gil’s aware that even though he sees only Jack, current Jack, his lover had darker skin, head shaved smooth, that they were from different places before they met in a market. That they had both come to live in the same city. They’d called it home before they met each other there, but meeting each other helped. _

 

__ _ It’s too far back, he has so little of it. He has a flash here, a flash there. The two of them on a boat together. A conversation about a cat. Jack gently massaging something onto his skin. Jack taking his hand with infinite care, in both his own. _

 

He never gets much of the ancient world. He barely knows a thing about their time in ancient China, doesn’t even know where in the Americas they were once together. Only that the city was expansive and beautiful, and that they had lived together. The more recent, the more full and vivid, except for the one where he and Jack never met, where he’d died so young-- they both must have, for the timeline to work out.

 

Jack laces their fingers together and brings Gil’s hand to his cheek, smile soft. “Tell me if you find anything good. You know my favorite.”

 

_ Jack’s hand to his, as they practice choreography, Gil learning to dance the women’s part, in a dress and all. Jack teasing him for being such a pretty thing. The dress is cumbersome, the wig heavy and itchy, but Gil has no complaints when it means they’ll dance together. When Jack will embrace him before a crowd and kiss his lips. _

 

__ _ Jack, in their room, pressing him down to the bed, calling him a pretty thing without any dress or wig or rouge, just his own self. Sliding fingers into Gil’s mouth, praise falling from his lips, so much of it, for everything Gil was and did. Jack had been an actor, Gil had only been pretty enough to wear a dress, but he’d done his best for the thrill of love scenes with Jack. And then in their room that they shared, running lines until they were overcome together, falling into bed, Jack playing the part of a lover so well each time until they weren’t playing anymore. _

 

He doesn’t know how they died. There’s a huge gap between that and the next, where they might have lived long, full lives. 

 

There are lives marred by tragedy and others in unremarkable times. Wars, peaces… Times when they’re travelers, times when they’re homebodies. And every single life, Jack tries so hard to take care of him. Even if he’s reluctant at first, even if he tries to fight what they have-- because of class, or religion, or gender, they’ve had enough reasons not to love each other and in nearly every life, loved each other still.

 

_ Jack’s hand grabbing his, the corridor empty, echoing, only a moment and someone could find them. _

 

__ _ “Come away with me. Be my wife.” Jack, desperate. Aware, as Gil is, of the tension mounting, the riots, the mobs. Jack had been a servant, Gil a lady.  _

 

__ It’s that way often. He has a table to keep track. Not being a lady, but being in some social position over Jack. Not always, but often enough to seem a trend. As in this life, usually a matter of Gil’s father hiring Jack for something or other.

 

Gil’s never seen his answer, but he’s had flashes of what came next. 

 

_ The two of them making love in a closet, only half undressed. Jack kissing down his throat, his chest, hands gripping Gil’s thighs hard enough to bruise and never hard enough. Desperate, desperate, they were so desperate that time around, they had been untouchable to each other for too long, they had caught each other’s eye too often. Hand brushing hand in the passing of this or that requested item, in secret stolen moments, everything pouring into these illicit rendezvous, into passions spilling over, into clothing torn, trinkets exchanged, wild sex had.  _

 

It hadn’t even seemed strange to him to see them that way, to see them with their current faces, bodies, names, knowing those things were very different. Knowing Jack would have been inside him. 

 

He’s also seen his death, that one.

 

__ _ Jack, watching from the crowd, the tears streaming down his face, Gil should have run away with him when there had been time. Jack had scraped together some meager savings, Gil had been slipping him things a little at a time, they must have been planning a life together. Gil standing above the crowd, whispering Jack’s name. One hand at his throat, knowing his head was about to be separated from his body. The other pressed firm to a nervous stomach, as if he could still the violent flutter.  _

 

When he sees the past lives, he sees their faces and hears their names but somehow he knows that in that life, Jack had been called Gilbert, he wonders if his name was ever Jack. He likes the thought it might have been.

 

He has no way of knowing how Jack might have died, in any life where he’d died first. Even if it had been notable enough to make it into some history book or other, he’d never recognize him. He’s so rarely aware of what their previous names were, their previous faces. 

 

_ Jack clasping Gil’s hand to his heart, pressing him back against the wall of the carriage house with the nearness of his body. _

 

__ _ “I’m going away. Business. But I’ll come back to you. Will you give me something until then?” _

 

__ _ “Do you mean a token?” Teasing, as if he wouldn’t give Jack everything. Jack slept in his bed each night, an eccentricity he’d been allowed since youth. Jack travels more often than they would like, and the bed is so wide and empty and cool when he does, like trying to sleep in a snowbank when he’s used to a featherbed before a roaring fire. _

 

__ _ Well, they do sleep in a featherbed before a roaring fire. But it doesn’t feel like one when he’s alone.  _

 

__ _ Every time Jack travels, he takes Gil first. If it’s short notice, they don’t get a night before, in their bed, they get a stolen moment hiding in some dark corner, or even in the carriage itself. And every time he goes, Gil ties his hair back for him with one of his own ribbons, and asks him to be sure to bring it back in good condition. They’re always blue. It’s just the color he has, but Jack had told him once, lying in bed and holding Gil’s hand in his, that it comforts him. That the ribbon should be the color of Gil’s eyes comforts him. That it should still smell of Gil’s hair when it’s tied around his own comforts him. _

 

He goes through his timeline, goes through all the memories he can’t try to access all at once. When he’s not focused on research, not moving through them as if they were pages to glance at and file away, it would make him crazy to have it all in the forefront all the time. But he likes having the ability to call it up, in his mental archives room. 

 

Other people have different ways of dealing with keeping their memory organized. Childhood homes or imaginary palaces. Gil Turner has an archives room, and whatever disarray the rest of his mind might be in at the best of times, his archives are kept in perfect order. 

 

_ “Jack?” And then as now he couldn’t help a little whine creeping into his voice. And a little contrition, at Jack’s cough. “Harrison?” _

 

__ _ “Yes, Sir?” _

 

__ _ “Could you pass me… something?” _

 

__ _ His parents are there, they’re the ones who’ve hired Jack, but Gil is the one Jack serves. He passes Gil the salt, their fingertips brush, he fades away into the background for everyone but Gil, Gil is always so aware of him, aware of how  _ near _ he is at all times. Gil can feel him when he waits back behind his chair. Even when there’s no company, Jack won’t eat with him, but he will sit down at least. He wouldn’t at first, he still resists the idea of something between them. Even so, he’ll sit at the table and feed Gil, when they’re alone. _

 

__ _ Gil had been sick the first time, unable to feed himself. Unable to take in much at all, and Jack had spooned broth into him and made him drink teas and tisanes, and fretted over him so much, even more than when he’d been dead drunk and then awfully hungover. Jack had been so worried, and so gentle, and so loving, and Gil hadn’t been able to give it up just because he was better.  _

 

__ _ When everyone leaves and they’re finally alone, Jack kneels by his chair, and takes his hand, and rests his head against Gil’s knee-- the way he would do some seventy-five years hence, in another life-- and he makes unnecessary apologies. He’d taken it so hard in that life, that he couldn’t… he couldn’t ever be the one to support Gil, that he couldn’t deserve him, as if he hadn’t nursed him back to health and loved him, as if he wasn’t always at his side to protect him. _

 

__ Jack had been called up, for the Great War. Gil had volunteered. He doesn’t know more than the timeline suggests. He thinks they went together.

 

Between that life and this one, the black pushpin. Jack might have been the dog that should have been Gil’s faithful boyhood companion. If he hadn’t been murdered before they could meet. He prefers to think of it that way, because it’s the only way that Jack would still have a full lifespan. But he thinks it’s okay that they skipped one go-around, because now they’ve got this life. Jack, reluctant in the face of the supernatural, reluctant in the face of falling in love, but as ever, unwilling to let any harm come to Gil. Ready to throw away the chance of his perfect life for him. 

 

Jack complains that this job is the best he can get, but it’s not true. Jack is a good writer, and he cares about real journalism. He could get another job, it’s Gil who can’t leave Sensation.

 

And Jack thinks Gil doesn’t know, because he was busy being sick off the balcony and into what he hoped was an empty garden, but he still overheard someone offering Jack a job interview, at that party they’d gone to, where the crab puffs had been bad and Gil had just about turned his insides inside out. He’d been the canary in the mineshaft, he’d eaten two of the things and gotten sick immediately, where other people slowly felt sick later on in the evening. Jack had spent the whole shindig out on the balcony rubbing his back and talking to him about nothing important, it had mostly just been the cadence of his voice that Gil could hear over his own rebellious stomach, but he’d heard when someone had come out and offered Jack an interview, made it sound like a done deal. 

 

Gil had felt even sicker, in a way that had nothing to do with the crab puffs. Jack hadn’t touched those. He’d driven Gil home, and washed his face, and put him to bed, and sat up holding his hand and reading out loud to him, while he’d shivered miserably and curled up in a ball and pressed his forehead to Jack’s hip.

 

In the morning, Jack brought him juice, and a scrambled egg white on dry toast, and groused about his career before calling Gil’s father to let him know they were taking a sick day, that he’d come in later alone if Gil was keeping food down. 

 

“How’s your timeline? You remember anything new?” Jack asks now, grabbing Gil’s hand to bring to his lips.

 

“Nothing new really comes to me without the hypnosis, usually, but I’m just trying to use these books on fashion through history to narrow things down beyond knowing the century…” Gil shows him the pages he’d photocopied. “In the very late seventeen hundreds, or the very early eighteen hundreds, you and I used to get up to things.”

 

“We could get up to things now.” Jack offers, and Gil sets aside his research for the time being.

 

“Only if you do that thing I’ve always liked.”


End file.
